


the rider

by Naraht



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Sports, Angst, Cycling, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 04:34:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9583862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: During a race in the Pyrenees, Ralph sends his loyal lieutenant on a ride that ends in tragedy.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: this is unremittingly grim. I don't know why I write these things.
> 
> This is set just before the dominance of Team Sky in cycling. Ralph's team is fictional.

Endless hours of staring at other men's lycra-clad arses, thinks Ralph, ought to be enough to turn any man gay. 

Only it's not true. On this purgatorial hillclimb the specific arse at which he's staring, wrapped in the purple and pink of their team colours (someone has a fine sense of irony), belongs to his lieutenant, who is as straight as they come. 

And Ralph, however much he might try to deny it, was gay from the start.

Twenty-six is young to be a road captain. He's proud of that: some measure of responsibility, some measure of trust. His teammates seem to like him. But he's under no illusions. This is a second-tier race and it's a second-tier team. But then everyone knows that the British can't do cycling. Having the logo of their sponsor – First Group – blazoned across chests and arses only adds to the sense of irony.

Ralph is under no illusion about his own physical gifts, which are, by the stern standards of professional cycling, no more than adequate. Thin from the start, he has starved himself down into the semblance of a climber. But what he mainly brings to the team is a talent for hard work and a nearly inexhaustible capacity for suffering. He tries not to think too hard about the latter.

Thankfully there is no room for reflection on a hill like this. 7.4 kilometers at an average gradient of 8.2%. This is how Ralph thinks of it, shorn of all poetry and geographical context. (He was going to study geography at university once.) 

The sheer physical effort banishes all consciousness of the world around him. Gone is the Pyreneean mountain, the valley to one side, the brown of the scrub. Gone are the last slanting rays of sun, the sweeping dark clouds that threaten rain and thunder. (Please God, not until after the descent.) Gone too, eventually, is the road itself, and the sight of his lieutenant toiling up the hill in front of him. All that is left in his narrowed vision is the wheel that he has to hold, and all that remains in his mind is the will to follow. Shorn of all reflection and desire, Ralph is left with nothing but his own body. Its every instinct cries out for pity, for any respite from the superhuman effort which he demands of it. Lungs scream for air, muscles scream agony, his heart pounds against his ribs at nearly 200 beats per minute. He is at the red line. Exactly where he wants to be.

Ralph has never pitied himself. He pushes on. He holds the wheel.

Only when they reach the summit is he able to breathe again. He looks around him. He is still on his lieutenant's wheel and they are still near the front of the peloton. Ahead of them the long descent to the valley ahead. A few spits of rain. The clouds are about to open.

He comes up alongside his lieutenant. As anonymous as everyone else in a helmet and sunglasses, he could not be more distinctive to Ralph.

A brief nod in between gasps for breath is all the acknowledgment they need. The plan, in the abstract, was shaped that morning in the team bus, over cups of espresso. Now it only falls to Ralph to set it into motion. _Go._

In the hundred yards of false flat before the descent starts in earnest, Ralph's lieutenant musters a final reservoir of strength and steps on the pedals. He is off like a shot, ahead of the peloton, plummeting down the mountain road. And the heavens open and the rain begins to pour down.

Ralph is under no illusions about his lieutenant's ability to win the stage. It's impossible. The final 30k on the flat, with the peloton screaming along behind him, will do for him what the climb hasn't. But he is a superb descender and, if he can stay out for long enough, men will blow up left and right trying to reel him in. Smashing the other teams' leadout trains with a forced pursuit is Ralph's only hope of getting his sprinter home to victory.

In the pouring rain it's almost impossible to see the road. As Ralph begins his own descent everything is leaden grey, everything awash in sheets of water. It's as if, from 2500 meters altitude, he has suddenly been plunged into the depths of the sea. _Full fathom five,_ thinks Ralph. He throws his sunglasses to the side of the road and presses on.

A switchback in the road, a break in the rain. Ralph can suddenly see his lieutenant descending far below, still alone. With a wet road, on a 10% gradient, he is tucked and pedalling hard. Just as Ralph ordered.

There is no time to think about it. No time to reflect. No time to look ahead beyond the next corner. Just as he wants it.

Each corner demands its own calculus. The narrowing chance to brake, coming into the corner. The slickness of the road, lending its own risk to braking. His speed, perilously high. The camber of the road and its surface, patched and worn and lightly edged with gravel. Angle of lean. The set of his pedals, which skim dangerously close to the tarmac. Line to take into the corner, out of the corner. And the sheer drop at the edge of the road, which should form no part of his calculations, for he does not intend to leave it.

One corner succeeds another, and another. There is something hypnotic in it. He should know where he is, how close to the bottom of the descent. It is his responsibility – the strategy, the tactics of the race. He must think of the team as a whole even balanced precariously, as he is, on the red line of his own physical capacity. 

During a brief straightaway he looks down, but the stage notes on his stem are lost in the rain, his meticulous handwriting blurred into an Impressionist wash of ink. There is nothing in his earpiece but static. He is alone.

No. He's not alone.

There is his lieutenant, still far below, entering a hairpin turn. The tarmac slick with rivulets of water from an overhanging cliff face. An aggressive line. Speed high. Miscalculation.

Between one blink and the next, Ralph sees his lieutenant – unable to brake, unable to corner – run out of tarmac. Straight off the edge of the road, flying into the void beyond.

Silence. The sound of the falling rain and the dull drone of the moto behind him.

Ralph never knows what does it for him. Maybe the same patch of slick tarmac that doomed his lieutenant. Maybe his speed was too high coming into the turn. Maybe the moment's lapse of concentration was enough, when he saw his friend go over the edge.

For a brief instant there's the tortured scream of his pedal scraping against the road. Then it all happens at once.

He's thrown into the air. A sudden starburst of pain when he hits the ground. Something snaps. Then there's the agonising slow motion of sliding out on tarmac, shredding thin lycra in an instant and flaying the bare skin beneath.

Still sliding, he tenses, waiting for a second impact. Another rider coming from behind him, or the moto, or a race car. Or the sickening moment of emptiness that will tell him he's reached the edge of the road, with the long drop beyond. But there is nothing.

Ralph lies curled on the road, gasping for air. His cheek is laid against the wet, grimy, gritty asphalt and he has never felt anything more beautiful in his life. He can sense the movement of the air as other cyclists pass him at speed, a sussuration like the wings of the Angel of Death.

A moment later the real pain hits. He lies there, trying not to vomit from it.

Someone is beside him, helping him sit up. He shakes his head, trying to shake off the dizziness, the blur in his vision. It is a mistake. But at least the rain has stopped.

They're trying to say something to him. He hasn't the time to listen.

"Put me back on my bike," says Ralph.

His bike, miraculously, is intact. He is less intact, but he wobbles to his feet with someone supporting him. He can feel cold wind on his skin where the lycra has ripped away. Rain, sweat, tears rolling down his cheeks.

 _Keep going, keep going, keep going._ His brain revolves in a loop, stripped down to the one physical imperative. _Keep going._

" _Abandonnez_ ," someone is saying, at a great distance. " _Votre clavicule._ "

His left arm dangles as if it's unconnected to the rest of him, and he's certain he's done something to the wrist as well. But there is the bike. Someone has picked it up and is steadying it at arm's length, a problem needing to be solved.

Only Ralph can solve it. Head still spinning, he straddles the bike. With his good hand, he half unzips his jersey, tucks his left arm into it up to the elbow. An improvised sling. No time to wait for the medics, no time for...

Ralph looks to his right. People are gathering at the edge of the road, exclaiming, looking down at... He can't see.

He's seen men miss a corner in other races. Seen them go off the edge of the road at speed, and only seconds later drag themselves back up the slope, clutching at rocks and tussocks of grass in their desperation to get back to the race. He's seen...

But he can't see. There's nothing to see. He can't look.

Ralph clips his foot to the pedal. Someone grabs his saddle and gives him a long, ragged push. He leaves his lieutenant behind. He goes.

He is barely conscious of the rest of the race. He makes it down the descent by the grace of god, hardly pedaling at all, shivering with cold and shock. Other riders pass him at speed, no more than breaths of air and blurs of colour. His line is abysmal. He can't calculate, he can't think. He can't allow himself.

Ten kilometres onto the flat he's caught by the grupetto. He tucks himself into its depths, sheltered from the wind at last. _Crash, chute, choque,_ on everyone's tongue. Concerned glances. There would be pats on the back if it hadn't been flayed raw. Someone grabs the back of his saddle, tows him along for a few hundred metres. He looks up, tries to loose a _thank you_ from parched lips, but his benefactor is already melting back into the bunch.

One small hill, eight k from the finish. A spectator runs with him, pushes him up the hill. It doesn't matter. There's no press moto nearby. Somewhere – too far away – the race has already ended. Ralph doesn't give a damn who's won.

He rolls across the finish line in the last ragged fringes of the grupetto. Stops pedaling a hundred metres out, letting the momentum carry him across the line. He's never before sat up so straight in any race that he hasn't won.

Someone grabs his bike before it can topple over with him still sitting on it. They take him – who knows where. Not to the podium; that was never in question. Probably back to the team bus. He lets his head fall, watches the tarmac slowly roll past beneath his feet. Now that the adrenalin is fading away, the pain is beginning to hit, a long slow throbbing wave nowhere near its crescendo.

They take him to the back of an ambulance. He sucks in ragged breaths, feeling the pain blossom with each expansion of his lungs.

"Yeah, it's a bad one," says the doctor, an incongruous Australian accent. "Don't need an X-ray to see that. Let's get you into a sling."

Unmoving, stoic, Ralph sits and lets her do what she will. He wants to be sick. His memories, suppressed by the numbing adrenalin of the race, are coming back. _Hairpin. The end of the road. And I left him there._

His voice comes out hoarse and raspy after five hours of disuse. He can't even muster the rising tone of a question. "How is he."

"You need to drink something," says the doctor, aggressively matter-of-fact. "Shock and dehydration are a bad combination. Otherwise I'll have to put in a line."

"Is he..."

"Let's worry about the state of you first, shall we?"

 _They know,_ thinks Ralph. _They know and they won't tell me._

He imagines his lieutenant lying at the foot of the drop with a shattered pelvis or a broken back. Hoisted up on a spinal board, helicoptered straightaway to the nearest hospital. Months of rehabilitation. Maybe never to ride again.

He shakes his head, refuses the bidon they are offering him. He lets them run the line.

A few minutes later his directeur sportif turns up, puts a hand on his undamaged shoulder. "Ralph."

"I left him."

A long pause. "You couldn't have done anything."

Ralph looks up into the man's eyes and he knows. No rehabilitation. Never to get on the bike again. The end, in a 2.1 category race that he was never going to win, at the bottom of a cliff in France.

He waits for his DS to add some sort of consolation, _he was dead as soon as he hit the rocks_ , but the words never come. Perhaps he wasn't. Perhaps he took some time to die.

"Of course I couldn't," says Ralph Lanyon.

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to read a novel about cycling with real literary merit, from someone who knows what he's talking about, I highly recommend Tim Krabbe's _The Rider_. I didn't want to steal the title, but the parallel with _The Charioteer_ was just too good to pass up.


End file.
